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Path planning and obstacle avoidance based on shortest distance algorithm

Conference Paper · December 2017

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Abdulmuttalib Turky Rashid Abduladhem Abdulkareem Ali

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 Path planning and obstacle avoidance based on
shortest distance algorithm
Abdulmuttalib.T. Rashid(1), Abduladhem A. Ali(2)
(1) Electrical Engineering Department
(2) Computer Engineering Department
University of Basrah
Basrah, Iraq
Abstract— In this paper, a modified algorithm called shortest
path is presented for trajectory planning and obstacle avoidance.
This method guarantees both smoothness and obstacle avoidance
in the trajectories of the robots. The digital differential algorithm
is used in this method to implement a linear and circular
movement of robots and the Dijkstra’s algorithm to search for the
shortest path. Three simulation scenarios are used to implement
this algorithm: The first one, includes the building of a tree of
paths between robot and goal, the second one is for choosing the
shortest distance from the source to target, and the third scenario
is for comparison the length of the path and the time of arrival for
different target locations.
Keywords—Path planning, digital differential analyzer, Dijkstra’s
algorithm.
I. INTRODUCTION
One of the important subjects for the mobile robot
navigation is the path planning and obstacle avoidance. Each
robot in a team, independently from the others should be able to
know his current location, plan the next movement, move to the
next location as expected, and at the same time avoid the
obstacles during the motion.
The path planning with polygonal obstacles in most of the
known methods involves the use of graph search algorithms to
find the shortest path from the possible paths [1]. The visibility
graph of the obstacle vertices, defined as the graph where there
is a connection between two vertices if and only if they are
visible from one another, is used as the graph of possible paths.
As an example, both the vertexes A and B are visible to each
other when the segment AB does not intersect any obstacle in
the environment [2-3]. A widely used algorithm for finding the
shortest-path is based on Dijkstra‘s algorithm [4], and uses a
full visibility graph. The generation of shortest paths for mobile
robots involving of the collision-free tangents among all
obstacles is represented as effective methods. These methods
are based on searching for the shortest path over the tangent
graph [5]. These methods are more efficient than the visibility
graph methods.
There are some works dealing with the shortest path of
circular obstacles. In these works the visibility graph can be
extended to a tangent graph, by assuming circular curves on the
borderline of the obstacles and joint tangents of the circular
Mattia Frasca, Luigi Fortuna
Electrical and Electronics Department
University of Catania
Catania, Italy
curves [6-7]. All these works need the value of the radius R of
the circle, and hence rebuilding is necessary for a circle of a
different radius. On the contrary, Voronoi diagrams do not need
the value of the radius of the disc, because the shortest distance
to the obstacles is larger than the radius of the disc [8].
However, a method based on Voronoi diagrams does not take
into account the problem of minimizing the path to the goal.
This paper produces a path planning algorithm, which is a
modified tangent visibility graph [6, 9]. It replaces the collision
avoidance between two robots by collision avoidance between
robot and obstacle. A collision-free motion of a circular robot
of radius R among circular obstacles is obtained by expanding
the radius of obstacles by the radius of the robot. The modified
method is created by using the tangent visibility graph
construction algorithm. This algorithm constructs paths from
source to target by manipulating obstacles lying in the direct
virtual line between the robot trajectory and the target. The
shortest distance algorithm is used for choosing the shortest
distance to avoid the collision with obstacles. The shortest path
to the robot trajectory is searched by using the Dijkstra‘s
algorithm. This paper is ordered as follows. Section II defines
the low-level control of the robot. Section III describes the
tangent visibility graph algorithm. Section IV develops the
theoretical analysis, describing the shortest distance for the
tangent graph algorithm. In Section V, the algorithm is tested in
two scenarios. Finally, the conclusion of the paper are discussed
in section VI.
II. LOW LEVEL CONTROL OF THE ROBOT
This control needs to study the properties of the mobile
robot with differential-drive system and the digital differential
analyzer algorithm, which is chosen to satisfy the straight and
circular movement of the robot. The mobile robot has two
wheels connected through a common axis with the ability to
moves separately in forward and reverse directions. These
wheels are designed to enable the robot to turns by increasing
the outer wheel speed and decreasing the inner wheel speed
[10].
The digital differential analyzer algorithm is used to draws
circles and lines on a screen of a computer which has a
pixelated display system [11]. It is a faster method for
calculating pixel position and easier to implement in hardware.
 and
A. The straight line drawing algorithm
The straight line path planning of mobile robot can be
accomplished with the digital differential analyzer. Two
y=yb – ya (2)
‗round‘s and two adds per pixel are required. It is a scan
conversion line algorithm. The line at unit intervals is one Where x and x represents the differences in x-Axis and y-
coordinate and the algorithm has to determine the Axis between the end points.
corresponding integer values nearest to the line for the other
coordinate. The digital differential analyzer algorithm, as 3. Calculate
shown in Fig. 1 a, is accomplished according to the following
points: Steps = max(x, y) (3)

4. Compute

Incx = x/Steps (4)

And

Incy = y/Steps (5)

Where Incx and Incy are represent the magnitude of

incremental between two point‘s lies on the line.

5. Let x = xa and y = ya

Set pixel (Round(x), round(y), c)

6. For I = 1 to steps

x = x + incx (6)
(a)
y = y + incy (7)

Set pixel (Round(x), round(y), c).

B. The arc line drawing algorithm

The digital differential analyzer algorithm can be also used
to implement the arc paths of mobile robots [12]. This
algorithm assumes that the arc path is part of a circle with a
center at the origin. The calculation of mobile robot trajectory is
achieved according to the following points as shown in Fig.1 b.

1. Input the angle θ, the radius R and the center of the

circular arc (xc , yc).

2. Let the increment angle equal to dθ and initial

position (x, y).
(b)
3. Set pixel (Round(x), round(y), c).
Fig. 1 The digital differential analyzer algorithm. (a) Line drawing algorithm.
(b) Circle drawing algorithm 4. For angle = 0 to θ step by dθ
1. Input the points A(xa, ya) and B(xb, yb) that represent the x = x + (yc - y)*dθ (8)
end line points.
2. Compute y = y + (x - xc )*dθ (9)
x=xb – xa (1) Set pixel (Round(x), round(y), c).
 III. THE TANGENT VISIBILITY GRAPH
One task to performing trajectory planning with obstacles
avoidance in an environment is to search for the shortest path in
graph contains all the possible paths between a source and a
target. The graph collecting all the possible paths to the target is
called the visibility graph which has nodes that represent the
vertices of the obstacles and edges that represent the paths
between any two visible pairs of vertices. The tangent lines to
two obstacles at its endpoints are called bitangents. These
bitangents produce the edges of a graph called the tangent
visibility graph, as shown in Fig.2. The number of the bitangent
around n obstacles is equal to or less than (4 n – 4) [2]. The
concept of this method is summarized by searching for safe and
shortest paths for the robot. The algorithm repeats several steps
represented by assuming a straight line between robot trajectory
and target for detecting any collision and then changing the
collision path by two safe tangent paths to the surface of the
collide obstacle. This procedure repeats until the robot reaches
to the target.
Fig. 2 The tangent visibility graph
IV. THE SHORTEST DISTANCE OF THE TANGENT GRAPH
In this Section, a modified algorithm of the tangent graph
method is presented. The approach used in this section is
applied to simple small differential-drive robots. The algorithm
consists of the following subsections. At first, the tangent
visibility graph is constructed. The shortest distance algorithm
is used to modify the tangent visibility graph. Finally, the
shortest path among the obtained paths is chosen by using the
Dijkstra‘s algorithm.
A. The tangent visibility graph algorithm
This section describes the steps for building the tree of paths
of the robot from source to target using the tangent visibility
graph. The root of the tree represents the source for the
structure. The idea of this algorithm is summarized by
searching for safe and shortest paths for the robot. The
algorithm repeats several steps by assuming a direct path
between robot trajectory and target for detecting any collision
and then changing eventual colliding paths by substituting it
with two safe tangent paths. This process repeats until the end
point of the path is the target. The investigation of this method
is represented by the following steps:
Step1: At first, the position, radius, orientation, and velocity
of robot: (Ps (xs , ys),rs, θs, vs) must be known and the
position and radiuses of obstacles: (P1,.., Pn, r1,…, rn) the
target location: (Pg(xg, yg) also, must be known.
Step2: Test if any obstacle intersects the straight line
between the robot trajectory and the target. The intersection
happens if the distance h between the obstacle and the line
from the source to target is less than the radius of an
obstacle. Fig. 3 shows the method used in estimating the
distance h according to the following equation.
a = (yg - ys) / (xg - xs) (10)
b = -1 (11)
c = ys – a * xs (12)
h = Abs(a * xabs + b * yabs + c) / Sqrt(a 2 + b 2))
(13)
Fig. 3 The distance between an obstacle and robot trajectory
Step3: If any intersection is detected, then outer tangent line
and inner tangent line are drawn from the trajectory of robot
to the obstacle.
Step4: Steps two and three are repeated for all the paths.
B. Shortest distance algorithm
In this section, the shortest distance algorithm for obstacle
avoidance is introduced. This algorithm is similar to the
reciprocal orientation algorithm [13], which is used to predict
the circular trajectories of two robots for the near future. The
difference between the reciprocal orientation algorithm and this
algorithm is that the concept of reciprocally is not applied since
it is used between a robot and static obstacle. The current
algorithm is used to reduce the distance between robot and
obstacle when changing the robot direction in order to avoid the
collision, as shown in Fig. 4. The algorithm is repeated for each
trajectory in the tangent visibility graph with the following
steps:
 Step1: By using shortest distance algorithm, each direct path
in the tangent visibility graph is modified to a straight line
and arc trajectory. V. SIMULATION RESULTS
The results in this section are simulated with the Visual
basic language on Windows operating system using a computer
with Intel core I7 CPU 2.53 GHz processor. Three different
simulations are used to test the proposed algorithm for path
planning and obstacle avoidance.
 Tree of paths scenario: the first simulation shows path
planning with unlimited sensing.
 Shortest path scenario: the second simulation shows the
shortest path of the autonomous mobile robot to target.
 Comparison for different target locations scenario: the
Fig. 4 The shortest distance algorithm third simulation shows the comparison for the shortest
path and the time of arrival between the tangent visibility
Step2: The length of the straight line is chosen in a way that graph and the shortest distance algorithms for different
satisfies the collision-free path. target locations.

Step3: The digital differential analyzer algorithm is used to

compute the straight line trajectories from source to target.

Step4: The digital differential analyzer algorithm is used for

computing the arc trajectory at each path from source to
target. The complete trajectories after modification are
shown in Fig. 5.a.

C. Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm

This section describes the way of searching for the shortest
trajectory. Dijkstra's algorithm is used to solve the problem of
the shortest path from robot location to target. The algorithm (a)
finds the shortest path from a single source node to a single
target node in the graph and stops the search when the shortest
path has been determined. The steps implementing this
algorithm are as follows:

Step 1: Label each path to each node on the graph with a

distance equal to infinity.

Step 2: At the beginning, the current node is the starting

point with a distance equal to zero.

Step 3: The distance between any unvisited node and the

current node is updated by computing the sum of the
distance between them. Label with blue color, as shown in
Fig.5.b the edges of a path which is found to be shorter than
the previously selected path.
Step 4: Labeled the current node as visited and select the
unvisited node which has the shortest distance as the current
node.
Step 5: Continue this process of updating the neighboring
nodes until the target is marked as visited. Once you have
marked the target as visited the shortest path (the bold red
path in Fig.5.b) is determined.
(b)
Fig. 5 The shortest distance of tangent graph (a)shortest distance algorithm (b)
Dijkstra Algorithm
Simulations for the paths from source to target are shown in
Fig. 6. The speed of robot is chosen to be equal to 80 pixels/s.
Fig. 6.a shows the use of the tangent visibility graph to
construct these paths. Fig. 6.b shows the use of the shortest
distance algorithm to modify the paths from source to target.
From the results of the first simulation between two algorithms,
we found that they are smooth and collision-free, have a good
angle of orientation, and produce the shortest path to the goal,
but the tangent visibility graph has more paths from source to
target.
 (a)
(b)
Fig.6. The trajectories from source to target. (a)The tangent visibility graph
algorithm (b) The shortest distance algorithm
Fig.7 shows the simulations to search for the shortest path
by using Dijkstra algorithm in both the tangent visibility graph
algorithm (Fig.7 a) and the shortest distance algorithm (Fig.
7b). The shortest distance algorithm has a less number of paths
from source to target, but its shortest path to the target is
slightly longer than the shortest path of the tangent visible
graph algorithm.
(a)
(b)
Fig.7. The shortest path from source to target. (a) The tangent visible graph
algorithm (b) The shortest distance algorithm
The last simulation (Fig. 8) shows that the tangent visibility
graph algorithm (Fig.8 a) has a shortest path with some pixels
and a less time of arrival with some milliseconds from the
shortest distance algorithm in all the cases of the target
locations.
 VI. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, the path planning of mobile robot using the
shortest distance algorithm is introduced. This algorithm has
been briefly defined and the simulation results for comparison
between it and the tangent visibility graph algorithm have been
presented. Both the discussed algorithms provide smooth and
collision-free trajectories. It can be observed that the shortest
distance algorithm produces a less complex tree of paths which
means that requires less computational efforts to construct the
paths. That means, the shortest distance algorithm requires a
lees computation time than the tangent visibility graph to search
for the shortest path. On another hand, this algorithm may
produce a slightly longer shortest path and a slightly longer
time of arrival compared to the tangent visibility graph.
The shortest distance algorithm in this paper is applied to a
robot with differential-drive constraints, but it can be also
applied to other kinematic systems, which have similar
kinematic constraints. In this paper, the implementation of the
(a) shortest distance algorithm considers the only two-dimensional
plane, but it can be improved to three-dimensional space.

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